


The Hour of Lead

by susiecarter



Category: Vantage Point (2008)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Betrayal, Canon-Typical Violence, Complicated Relationships, M/M, Surprise Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 08:58:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15263973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/susiecarter/pseuds/susiecarter
Summary: It wasn't over just because the president was safe. Far from it. Barnes was itching to track down the rest of Suarez's cell before reality could catch up with him, and if he needed Taylor to do it, then he needed Taylor to do it. It didn't mean he wasn't angry, and itdefinitelydidn't mean he was planning to forgive Taylor anytime soon. (AU: Taylor survives the end of the movie, and Barnes isn't happy about it. Or at least he doesn't want to be.)





	The Hour of Lead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hecate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/gifts).



> I can never resist an opportunity for a ... well, not an "everybody lives AU", but at least a "somebody lives" AU. :D You had fantastic prompts for this pairing, Hecate, and I grabbed a couple of them and shook to see what fell out! I hope you enjoy the result, and that you've had a wonderful RMSE.
> 
> All the Secret Service/law enforcement/medical stuff in here is completely handwaved and probably not at all realistic; sorry in advance to everybody who knows more about these things than I do! Title from the poem [After great pain, a formal feeling comes—](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47651/after-great-pain-a-formal-feeling-comes-372) by Emily Dickinson.

 

 

It wasn't over just because the president was safe.

Far from it. Another day, they might at least have been able to feel satisfied by having taken the appropriate steps to manage the intelligence that had come to light about the shooting—they'd treated it as a potentially serious threat, and it had been, and President Ashton had been kept well out of harm's way.

But not this time. This time, that was exactly what the bad guys had been hoping for; they'd followed procedure, and doing it had put Ashton in _more_ danger, not less, and if that kid hadn't run out into the road, God only knew whether Barnes would have been able to catch up to that goddamn ambulance.

And the worst part was that they hadn't even been looking for it. They hadn't heard so much as a whisper, hadn't even suspected it was all a double blind, and if Barnes hadn't happened to be standing in front of one particular screen at one particular moment, there was no telling how long it would have taken for anyone to realize.

It made Barnes's skin itch just thinking about it. Jesus Christ. They were the goddamn _Secret Service_ , they couldn't afford to get blindsided. They'd managed to identify Suarez, but of course he was dead; he was dead, Veronica Abarca was dead, Javier Gallego was dead, Enrique Porra was dead. Everyone who could have given them information about—about anything, the scope of the threat, whether the cell had additional members or units, what exactly they'd intended to do with Ashton once they'd had him, was dead.

Except for Taylor.

Barnes swallowed, staring at the elevator doors without seeing them.

Taylor, out of all of them. And even that was chance—because his car hadn't hit that concrete pylon quite hard enough, because Barnes had pulled him out of it before it could catch on fire or explode or whatever else that goddamn day had had in store. He'd been dazed, bleeding, but alive, and then—

Barnes squeezed his eyes shut, rubbed a thumb hard against the bridge of his nose.

Then the ambulance had crashed. Barnes hadn't—hadn't expected it, hadn't even been looking for it. He'd still been crouched over Kent—over _Taylor_ , goddamn it, Taylor. Crouched over Taylor and gripping him by the shirt, wordless, shaking. And then the ambulance had crashed, and he'd realized what it meant, had gone for Ashton as soon as he could get his head together, had shot Suarez before Suarez could shoot him and gotten Ashton out of there in one piece.

Should've counted for something. Shouldn't it? Should've made him happy, that he really wasn't damaged goods after all—or at least not so damaged he couldn't do his job. He'd saved Ashton, just like he was supposed to. Even though his hands shook, even though he still wanted the pills half the time, even though he didn't trust himself. He'd saved Ashton.

But he stood there in the elevator and thought it, and he didn't feel glad. Just tired.

The ding made him look up, belatedly straighten his tie and settle himself into something a little more like parade rest and a little less exhausted, just before the elevator doors opened. The agent waiting for him in the hall gave him a nod without staring too much, so he must not have looked like complete shit; and then she touched her earpiece and said, "This way, Agent Barnes."

They'd already brought Taylor in. Hours ago, probably, and made him sit in there the whole time, no idea what was going on or how long it would take—that was pretty standard. Barnes knew that; he was prepared for it. He was going to open the door and Taylor would already be in there, handcuffed, waiting, looking up at him.

He was prepared for it, except for all the ways he wasn't. For an instant it was—it was almost as bad as any flashback he'd ever had, any of the ones fucking Taylor had helped him breathe through with a steady warm grip on his shoulder; they locked eyes and he was right back under that overpass, Salamanca heat making him breathless, Taylor's shirt fisted in his hands, smell of Taylor's blood in the air, desperate and terrified and so fucking furious he couldn't see straight—

"Tom," Taylor said, blank, a little startled.

Barnes looked away, toward the wall, blinked and touched his tie again and tried to get his face under control. He didn't know what the fuck he looked like, didn't want to know. He was here to do a job. "Don't call me that," he said.

He tried to keep it quiet, level. It worked, mostly.

"Tom," Taylor said again, moving—Barnes hadn't looked again, it was just he could hear the shuffle, clink of handcuffs. And then Taylor winced, hearing himself, and cleared his throat and said, "Barnes. Sorry, I—sorry."

And Jesus Christ, what a thing to say. What a thing for Taylor to fucking say. Barnes laughed without meaning to, short sharp cough that scraped in his throat, and shook his head, and did let himself look at Taylor again.

He looked okay. Bruised up, head wound with a neat white bandage over it. Nobody had shaved his hair yet, even though he was already dressed like a prisoner. He was sitting a little stiffly, a little carefully. He'd—

He'd held himself like that the first day Barnes had met him. Not because he was hurt, not back then—he'd been cleaned up, steam-pressed, clearly wanting to make a good impression on the man who'd gotten shot for the president. Barnes had wanted to roll his eyes, a little; but Taylor had been upfront, told him it was an honor without getting bashful about it, and his shameless steadfast belief that Barnes was still sharp, capable, had made a nice change from everybody else looking at him sideways all the time, waiting for him to freak out. And then when he had freaked out, Taylor had just—handled it. Held onto him, talked slowly, quietly, told him stupid fucking jokes like "What did the crocodile say after eating the clown?" until he could breathe again.

Barnes had figured Taylor would change, look at him differently after. But it hadn't happened.

Made sense now, obviously. Taylor had needed Barnes to like him, to trust him. That was all.

"Sorry," Barnes repeated, flat. "Is that what you are."

Taylor sat there and looked up at him and didn't flinch. "Barnes," he said again, almost gently. "You here to interrogate me? Get some answers? You asked me why, when you pulled me out of the car. You asked me why I did it. You really want to know?"

"No," Barnes said, sharp. "It doesn't matter anymore. You did it, and we caught you. That's all there is to it."

"Yeah," Taylor said. "That's what I thought," and the corner of his mouth was lifting now, almost a smile, as if there were a single goddamn thing that was funny about any of this. "As if there could be a reason good enough, right? As if there were such a thing as a valid explanation for kidnapping the president. You can't let yourself get away with thinking that, and you can't let anybody else think it, either—except you did, for a second. You did, or you wouldn't have asked me to give it to you."

Barnes felt his jaw tighten, his teeth clenching. He shouldn't even be listening to this. He couldn't let Taylor get in his head, not again. It _didn't_ matter what Taylor might have said, what answer he might have given. It had been stupid to even say it: _why the fuck did you do this? What have you done?_ He'd just—

He'd just wanted to know. He'd wanted to understand, for Taylor to come up with some perfect impossible reply that would make it all make sense, that would make it so Taylor magically hadn't turned him inside out and fucked him over and then spent half the day trying to kill him.

But Taylor had, and that was all there was to it.

And maybe if Barnes told himself that enough times, he'd start to believe it.

"I'm sure you've got half a dozen rationales you'd love to give me," he said aloud, "but I'm not here to transcribe your terrorist manifesto, Taylor. I'm here to do my job."

Taylor stared up at him, and the smile was gone. It was like suddenly he didn't know what to say next, like that was as far as whatever script Suarez had given him went and he'd run out of lines. His handcuffed hands were curled around the edge of the metal table in front of him, and in this featureless little box of a room he looked pale, big-eyed. "Yeah," he said after a moment, more quietly than Barnes had been expecting. "Me too. You understand that, don't you, Barnes? I had a job to do—"

"Yeah, you had a goddamn job to do," Barnes couldn't help but snap, "and it wasn't to blow up half of Salamanca—"

"—and I did it—"

"—you were a goddamn Secret Service agent, you piece of shit—"

"—it wasn't personal—"

"Fuck _you_ ," Barnes heard himself shout, and he was—he hadn't even meant to move, but all at once he found himself across the table, leaning in, the edge a cold hard line across his thighs as he grabbed the collar of Taylor's shirt, bland khaki prisoner's uniform, and shook him hard enough to rattle those fucking handcuffs. "Fuck you," he said again, softer, knuckles to Taylor's collarbone, and Taylor was staring at him, silent, eyes huge and dark. "Of course it was fucking personal. You were my friend, you were—you were my goddamn _partner_. Jesus Christ. Of course it was personal."

Taylor swallowed, and didn't move away. "It—it wasn't supposed to be," he murmured, after a second, as if that were any better. "It was—you were—it wasn't supposed to be personal."

For a split second, Barnes was so angry he felt like he could have burst into flames—he wanted to shake Taylor and keep shaking, punch Taylor until he bled, wreck something so utterly that it was unrecognizable. _He_ felt wrecked, unrecognizable; some burned-down hollow thing that was just playacting at being Thomas Barnes, until it could find somewhere quiet and dark to let itself crumble into a pile of dust.

But he had a goddamn job to do.

He closed his eyes and breathed in, out, once and then twice, and then forced his aching fingers to unwind themselves from Taylor's shirt. "Betrayal's always personal, Kent."

He didn't even hear it—he only knew he'd said it once he opened his eyes again, looked at Taylor and saw the way Taylor was looking back at him, intent and a little pained.

"Yeah," Taylor said, low. "I'm starting to get that feeling."

Barnes looked away.

"You called me Kent before, didn't you? Outside the car. I was—I thought I must have imagined that. You never—"

"Shut up," Barnes said. "I'm here for whatever you know about Suarez, about the rest of your cell or any other operatives you're aware of, in Spain or elsewhere."

"Shouldn't the CIA be—"

"The Secret Service participates in select counter-terrorism operations," Barnes said flatly, "as you're perfectly well aware."

"And they sent you," Taylor said, "even though you were in about three car wrecks and it's been, what, 48 hours?"

"I'm fine," Barnes said, and it was mostly true. He had bruises coming up right and left, he ached; it wasn't anything serious. He'd slept, sort of. He'd—closed his eyes, let himself go quiet, and when he'd opened them again it had been a different day. That counted, right? "If you're going to talk to me, talk to me. If you aren't, quit wasting my time and somebody will be right in to take you back to whatever deep dark hole they're going to dump you in."

Taylor stared at him across the table, and then sighed through his nose and shook his head. "I don't have any names—"

"—because you didn't use them," Barnes said for him, "for the security of the operation, yeah, I'm familiar with the idea. But you must have had some kind of procedure in place. Wherever Suarez and Abarca were going to take the president, afterward—if they couldn't get there, if something went wrong, what would they have done next? They must have told you. If they'd died, you'd have been expected to do it. Right?"

Taylor looked away, down at the cuffs, and bit his lip. "There are some things I could try," he said slowly, after a second. "This is—we're still in Salamanca, right?"

"Yes." That, at least, wasn't dangerous information; nothing Taylor wasn't going to find out for himself, if this went the way it was supposed to. "If you cooperate," Barnes forced himself to add, "arrangements can be made—"

Taylor looked at him and smiled, sudden and bright and a little hysterical around the edges. "Yeah, sure," he said, "life in super-max solitary instead of Gitmo. Tempting. If I do this, Tom, that's not going to be why."

"Don't fucking call me that," Barnes said, low. "I don't care why. If you'll do it, then do it. I'll be right behind you every step of the way, and if you try anything— _anything_ —then I'll shoot you in the head. Understand?"

Taylor was staring at him again, and he wasn't sure why. It couldn't have been anything Taylor wasn't expecting to hear. "Yeah," he said, quiet. "I understand."

"Good," Barnes said, and then he turned around and went to find whoever had the keys to Taylor's goddamn cuffs.

 

 

 

He meant it, was the thing. Every word. And—yeah, all right, it had been gently suggested that he get the hell out of the CIA's way, but nobody on the ground in Salamanca right now had the authority to make it an order. The Secret Service answered to the president, and Ashton had told Barnes to do what he had to do, before he'd gotten rushed off to the hospital.

It was the chaos that had saved him, the chaos and foreign soil and the fact that he'd recovered Ashton; no doubt Taylor's life was going to get turned upside down and shaken to see what fell out, and Barnes was going to be subject to some kind of inquiry, two dozen people with ten thousand questions about whether there had been any warning signs, what he should have done differently, whether Taylor could have been stopped.

But not yet. There had been another explosion, timed, four hours after the first, and for another twenty-four hours after that everybody had been scrambling to search the whole city for more bombs. Barnes hadn't been anybody's highest priority. And Taylor was—Taylor was Barnes's problem. Taylor was Barnes's partner, and it was fucking personal, and if Taylor was going to die Barnes was going to be there for it, one way or another. He couldn't have let anybody else take Taylor out there, it was—none of them knew Taylor, none of them understood what he was capable of. It had to be Barnes.

They went plainclothes, obviously. Barnes was carrying, concealed, but there was no way Taylor was getting a weapon in his hands, and he must have realized it because he didn't even try to argue the point.

And then they went out into the streets of Salamanca, and—walked.

It was weird, looking around. Closer to the bombing site, Barnes knew, there were probably a shitload of police, roads still closed and buildings taped off. But out here, it was—nothing seemed amiss. There were people all around, talking, laughing, shopping. Maybe fewer than there would have been last week, but still. Funny, how something like that could happen and things could just—keep going.

They'd set Taylor up with a chip, a tracker, so even if he ran it didn't matter; but Barnes was still poised for it. He was following Taylor from a safe distance, trying to look like any old tourist wandering along a boulevard in Salamanca in the early afternoon, and about half the time he was pretty sure it worked. The other half, though—he kept catching himself clenching his jaw, his fists, every time Taylor moved in the corner of his eye, or turned his head. He almost wanted it to happen. He almost wanted the excuse to run Taylor down, shove him to the ground and grab him by the shoulders, the face, the throat, knock his head back against the pavement and—

But they were here to do a job. And Taylor was doing it, at least as far as Barnes could tell.

It was hard to be sure, but the further they went, the more Barnes started to get a feel for it. Which conversations mattered, which stops Taylor was making for a reason and which ones were just cover for the first kind. He talked to people, asked for directions in abashed English from one couple and then walked a little further, bought some kind of souvenir keychain and thanked the vendor for it in perfect Spanish. And then he bumped a guy, ducked in to apologize—but they held eye contact just a little too long, Barnes thought, and the way the guy nodded at Taylor felt like more than just accepting the apology.

It took hours, all told. Taylor left a scrap of paper wedged between some bricks; not a note, as far as Barnes could tell, just the blank scuffed quarter-sheet. Opened an exterior shutter on one building, spent a little too long looking at the front steps leading up into another. Barnes wanted to hate it, but the walk seemed to be helping the muscles he'd knotted up, tensing his way through hitting that truck earlier, and the sun, the heat, was like a sauna, making his shoulders settle despite themselves.

And then he looked up and realized he'd lost sight of Taylor.

He didn't panic, didn't rush. He kept walking, same steady pace, turning as if to glance back at a street sign to give himself a chance to check and double-check the far side of the avenue. Ten minutes, and then he'd call it in, and they'd be able to tell him where Taylor was to within five meters. It was fine.

He rounded the corner of a building, the sidewalk opening up into a plaza, and—

There. Taylor. Just standing there, looking back at him. That made Barnes tense up just as much as losing Taylor in the first place had, for a second, because the last thing he needed was Taylor drawing attention to him. But Taylor just met his eyes, looked conspicuously away and down at the tiles of the plaza, and then reached up to scratch absently along the line of his jaw with three fingers.

And that was—Barnes knew that gesture. They'd worked out a couple things like that, the two of them, when it had become clear they'd be partnered longterm. The look down, that was for holding position; and the three was three hours. They were in for a wait, then.

Lucky Taylor had picked a plaza with some greenery, a fountain, benches—it was an easy place to sit around for a while without looking conspicuous. Though Barnes supposed lucky wasn't really the word. That was probably exactly why Suarez, or whoever was in charge of the cell, had picked it for this.

It felt strange. All of this felt strange, but—sitting here, trailing his hand in the cool clear water, trying to look like nobody in particular; the sun dropping, a bit at a time, the light going gold; and all the time, being helplessly, relentlessly aware of Taylor, half a block away, buying himself a cheap disposable camera and snapping pictures of the buildings, the flowers.

If he'd taken any of Barnes, Barnes really was going to kill him.

They hit the three-hour mark. Nothing changed. Barnes could feel the tension trying to work its way back into his mouth, his jaw; but another half-hour wouldn't be far off Taylor's estimate. Maybe whatever was left of Suarez's cell was scrambling. Maybe most of them had already made a break for it, fled Salamanca; or maybe they were just taking their time, being careful, trying to figure out what Taylor was doing here after disappearing under that overpass.

But fifteen minutes into that half-hour, he fucked up and caught Taylor's eye again. Just for an instant, but it was long enough to see the way Taylor's mouth had gone flat, the way he was shifting his weight, fingers tense around the camera. Taylor didn't like this either.

Barnes waited it out anyway. And then, at minute thirty-two, Taylor checked his watch, did a little double-take for the benefit of anybody looking, and started moving off toward the avenue.

He didn't signal, didn't even look at Barnes again, and Barnes wanted to ask him what the fuck he was thinking but couldn't. He had to wait until Taylor had a little distance, and then get up himself—and he moved too fast when he did, walked too quickly, but after the weird forced leisure of sitting there for so long, it was a goddamn relief.

He should have had Taylor in sight again but didn't, and he picked up the pace further still; it was a sharp jerk, almost enough to knock the breath out of him, when somebody caught his arm.

But it was just Taylor—tugging him sideways into a narrow little alley before he could so much as glare, or tell Taylor he was going to blow their fucking cover. "I don't know what's wrong," Taylor muttered; he was leaning in close, keeping his voice low, and his goddamn hand was still around Barnes's goddamn wrist. "They—they could have figured it out, or—"

"You tipped them off, you mean," Barnes snarled at him. It made no fucking sense—if that was what Taylor had done, then why was he still here? Why pull Barnes aside like this, instead of getting the hell away and finding a knife somewhere to cut the tracker out?

But Barnes didn't care. It felt blazingly, bitterly satisfying to see Taylor jerk back, startled by Barnes's vehemence; to feel his gaze flicking back and forth, uncertain. "No—Tom, come on—"

"Do not," Barnes ground out, "call me that," and Jesus Christ, he had lost his mind, but there was nothing in this goddamn world he wanted to do more than shove Taylor backward into the wall, so that was what he did. He shoved Taylor, once and then again, until he stumbled, and Taylor still had him by one arm but the other one was free; he went for his own waist, the cool comforting weight of the gun he was carrying, drew it and shoved it up under Taylor's chin so Taylor had to tilt his head back, the whole line of his throat exposed.

But Taylor didn't look angry. He didn't look scared. "Barnes," he said, quiet, and didn't move. He didn't let go of Barnes, either.

Barnes had killed people before. Not many, but some. He'd done it because it was necessary, or because they were trying to kill him, or because he had a job to do. But he'd—he'd never _wanted_ to.

And, he discovered, he didn't want to now, either. Staring into Taylor's goddamn eyes—Barnes didn't want to kill him. He just—

He just wanted to hurt him. Wanted to _hurt_ him, wanted to tear him apart; the way it had torn Barnes apart, the sudden terrible wound that had flayed straight to the heart of him, when he'd seen Taylor on that screen and understood.

And the worst thing about it was—he couldn't. He couldn't, not ever. It had hurt like that because he trusted Taylor; because Taylor had been his partner, his friend. Because Taylor'd seen him at his lowest, his most fucked-up, and because he'd meant it when he'd thanked Taylor for helping him through it, and—

And what the fuck had any of that meant to Taylor? Jack shit. It had all been a goddamn lie, and Taylor had known it the whole time. For a second, sure, Barnes thought about the interrogation room, thought about Taylor's pale face and wide eyes. _It was—you were—it wasn't supposed to be personal._ As if that meant anything. As if anything Barnes could do to Taylor now would hit Taylor where he lived.

He shoved the gun up under Taylor's jaw a little harder—futile fucking gesture, compared to everything he couldn't do, but if he didn't have any way to touch Taylor that mattered, at least he had something. At least he had the goddamn gun.

After a long moment, Taylor swallowed, and Barnes could feel it against his knuckles, the back of his hand—the thinness of the skin over Taylor's adam's apple, the heat of him. "Tom," Taylor said.

And then half the alley exploded.

 

 

 

Barnes couldn't see, couldn't hear. But Taylor had been right there, and it only took a second for Barnes to find him—that was Taylor's shoulder, the curve of his skull, and he was still moving, breathing. Barnes grappled for him, got in front of him and blinked the spots out of his eyes; not that it helped much, because the alley was already filling with smoke. Not a real explosion—a flash-bang, and some kind of smoke bomb as a followup, but being taken by surprise was half the battle, and shots were already ringing off the dusty stone around them.

Barnes shot back, not expecting to hit anything but just hoping to keep from getting rushed. Except it wasn't just the alley he had to worry about, it was the street; he thought it and turned at the same moment, and a blow that would have caught him in the back of the head knocked the gun out of his hands instead. He heard it clatter, and then—Taylor, Taylor was on the ground but alive, and that had to be him going for it.

Barnes managed to stay with the guy who had come at him for one, two, three moves, and then he missed a block but it didn't matter, because Taylor shot the guy in the thigh and he crumpled with a groan. But he hadn't been alone. There were two of them, four, and the smoke was only getting thicker; Barnes felt the scratch in his throat a second before he had to cough.

He hit one of them on purpose, another with a wild glancing blow, and then a third one came out of nowhere and knocked his feet out from under him. It wasn't even a strike that did it, a pistol-whipping—he knew even as he fell that he wasn't going to be able to catch himself, sore tired muscles too slow for it, and he cracked his head on the cobblestones under him and was gone.

 

 

 

When he woke up, he was alone.

Alone, and tied up. He couldn't see with what, but it was thin and not particularly cool against his hands, his wrists. Narrow rope or maybe zipties, not cuffs; good if he could find a cutting edge somewhere, bad if all he managed to turn up was a paperclip.

His head had been a distant ache, for the first few seconds, but it got abruptly worse, an awful sickening throb. He closed his eyes and breathed through it, and after maybe a minute, it had eased up again.

He was in a room. They'd caught him, that was right. Him and Taylor. Probably throwing Taylor a party out there; and then they'd come in here, he'd serial-number them a few times, and they'd get sick of it and shoot him in the head.

Except when the sagging door did scrape open, it was Taylor. Looking grim, mouth set in a flat line, with a bottle of water in his hand. He was staring into the middle distance, with only the most cursory glance at Barnes—and then he must have realized Barnes had come to, jerked and looked again and rushed forward.

As if he were concerned. As if Barnes were going to fall for that bullshit _now_ , Jesus Christ.

"Tom," Taylor said, low, crouching and touching Barnes's head—the side, the back, near where the throb was the worst. Barnes twisted away from his hand and regretted it instantly; the world spun a lot more than it should have, and when everything had slowed again, Taylor was even closer, steadying Barnes with a warm careful grip on his side. "Hey, hey—sorry. You must feel like shit."

Wry, frank. Taylor had always been good at that tone, at making himself sound like he was right there with you, your best goddamn friend.

Barnes shut his eyes and didn't answer.

"I'd leave the water," Taylor murmured after a second, "but I don't think I can get away with cutting you loose."

Barnes considered the merits of dying of thirst. But they'd been out on the street in the sun for hours even before he'd hit his head and probably bled a lot, and just seeing that bottle in Taylor's hand had made his throat tighten, made the dusty taste in the back of his mouth unignorable.

He made himself look at Taylor, and Taylor took that for the agreement it was, uncapped the bottle and set the rim of its mouth to Barnes's—but Barnes didn't part his lips.

Taylor seemed to catch his drift after a second, shook his head and snorted half a laugh through his nose. "If I wanted you dead, there are easier ways," he said; but he took the bottle back, swished it a little so Barnes could see the water touching every part of the inside, and then took a generous swallow. "It's not poisoned," he added after, wiping his mouth, and this time when he held it out, Barnes went along.

And Jesus Christ, fuck, this was every single thing he didn't want to think about at once. Taylor was good at this, careful: didn't tip too fast, gave Barnes opportunities to swallow in between mouthfuls. Because he had plenty of practice—because sometimes Barnes's throat had been too tight to dry-swallow the pills, his hands shaking too badly to hold a glass of water. He'd always had to deal with it alone, before Taylor. But after, Taylor had been there, had helped him; hadn't treated it like anything unusual or anything Barnes needed to apologize for.

Fuck. Barnes squeezed his eyes shut, focused on the sensation of the water in his mouth and didn't look at Taylor, until at last Taylor tipped the bottle back to level and moved it away.

"I told them it was better to keep you alive," Taylor said, after a long tight moment of silence. "That that was why I took the shot, in the alley. That you might have information. People know you in the States, and you know the president—that maybe we could make a trade."

And Barnes couldn't not look at him then. "You expecting a thank-you?" he bit out.

"No," Taylor said, quiet.

Barnes sneered at him, and then looked pointedly at the wall instead until Taylor sighed and left.

He should have taken the opportunity, should have started poking around for something to cut whatever was tying him. But his head was killing him, his whole body a mass of aches and pains, and he was so goddamn tired. He sat there instead, leaning back against the wall with his eyes closed, chill bleeding up into his ass from the cement floor, and let the throb in his head, the slow surge and ebb and surge of it, wash over him like waves.

And then there was a noise. Not the door, Barnes realized, but somewhere past it. Raised voices, shouting, and some kind of scuffling. And then a low sound, quieter—an impact? More voices, a brief sharp crescendo, and Barnes was listening so hard, straining for it, that he flinched from a sudden loud report even before he understood belatedly that it had been a gunshot. One, and a cry; and then a second and silence, and there was no misunderstanding that.

And if it had been Taylor—

Barnes swallowed hard, trying to ignore the cold clench of his gut. If it had been Taylor, there wasn't anything Barnes could do about it, and one of them was probably about to come in here and shoot him, too. It would be stupid, to waste effort hoping that it hadn't been, that if anybody had had a gun out there it had been Taylor. Just because—what? Because he hadn't gotten his chance to beat Taylor's face in? Because he still couldn't stop _feeling_ too goddamn much about Taylor, even if now it was resentment, bitterness, hatred, instead of—

The door opened again. It was Taylor: even grimmer than last time, mouth pinched, eyes intent, and there was a spatter of blood going up one forearm, a scattering of stray drops drying dark along one cheekbone. And he did have a gun after all.

He didn't say anything, and Barnes couldn't bring himself to ask. He closed the door behind him, grabbed a banged-up crate out of the pile of junk in the room's far corner and turned it over, seating himself on it—facing the door, square between it and Barnes.

Barnes stared at his back. It had to be some kind of ploy. A trick. Because they knew Barnes wouldn't talk to any of them, and Taylor wanted to have a go? Because Taylor hadn't had enough of jerking Barnes's chain, goddamn him.

"You've got to be kidding me," he said aloud.

Taylor laughed, one clipped bark, and didn't look away from the door, gun steady in his hands. "Think what you want," he said. "But there's nobody in this building who wants you alive except me."

"Sure, because you minded so much when your terrorist pal was shooting out your passenger window at me," Barnes bit out. "Fuck you—"

And that did make Taylor turn, at last. "Because it was over!" he shouted. "Because it was—I'd already done it. I'd done it and I couldn't go back, and you knew, and I was never going to see you again. I was burning everything down anyway, and whether you died or not, I was never going to see you again." He stopped short, shook his head and rubbed a hand through his hair and laughed again, and this time it came out a little hysterical around the edges. "A clean break. Right?"

"Fuck you," Barnes said again. "As if I'm going to believe a single goddamn word you say. I should have shot you in the head back in that alley when I had the chance."

He didn't mean it. He wanted to, but he didn't; he could tell even before the words came out, could taste it in them as they crossed his tongue.

But Taylor didn't seem to realize it. He was staring at Barnes, and what was it about his eyes that made them look so huge in his face? "Well, you didn't," he said more quietly. "And I—I lost my chance, too. That day, I could've killed you. I knew I might have to, I was—I was already gone, right? No coming back. I could've done it."

"Then why didn't you?" Barnes snapped. "Why don't you? Come on, Kent, just _do_ it," and Jesus Christ, what was happening to his voice? When had his throat gotten so tight? "You think it's some kind of favor, leaving me like this, making me—"

— _feel like this, making me live through you doing this to me, you son of a bitch_ , but he couldn't say that, it was—he couldn't say that.

Kent moved, but it wasn't to bring the gun to bear, wasn't to press the mouth of it to Barnes's forehead. He came up off the crate, crouching down, grabbing Barnes's shirt, and Barnes figured he was just going to yell in Barnes's face, shout something else Barnes wasn't going to be able to let himself believe.

But he didn't. He was staring at Barnes, close, intent, and his fingers tightened in Barnes's collar. "It wasn't supposed to be like this," he said, low. "I had a job to do, I had an objective. I knew which side I was on. It was supposed to be simple."

"It's never that simple," Barnes told him, and it should have been angry, sneering, but he was—he was too goddamn tired. It came out on a sigh instead, the ebb of a wave, to match the ache in his chest, his head.

"Yeah," Kent said, and then kissed him.

It was—Barnes could hardly even work out what was happening, could hardly even understand that that sudden new sensation was Kent's mouth against his. It was quick, a hard press, closemouthed except for right at the end, Kent starting to pull away and his lower lip catching for a damp instant against Barnes's.

And he should have hit Kent— _Taylor_ , he should have hit Taylor. Should have kicked him, screamed at him, spit on him. Another trick, a cruel joke; he couldn't figure out what to think, what to say, and he ended up just sitting there staring at Taylor, shocked silent.

"Tom," Taylor said, soft, still so close that Barnes was practically breathing the name in on his next belated inhale. And then Taylor let his head drop forward, opened his hand so it wasn't fisted in Barnes's collar anymore but just spread across his chest. "Jesus, it wasn't supposed to be like this." He looked up again and laughed, wetness bright in the corners of his eyes. "When you dragged me out of that car, I should've strangled you with my bare hands."

"Yeah," Barnes agreed, barely more than a whisper.

 

 

 

(That was the thing that had burned worst of all. He'd—he'd thought about it. More than once. A lot more; a dozen times, a hundred. At first he'd just thought: okay. Maybe Taylor had a couple stars in his eyes, a little hero worship going on, but other than that he seemed fine, bearable. Hardly the worst thing Barnes had been trying to deal with, at the time. But then Taylor had been—

Taylor had been kind. Taylor had looked out for him, taken care of him when he needed it and not when he didn't, helped him steady his hands when he couldn't do it himself. Covered for him, once or twice; smiled at him.

Barnes had been fucked up after the shooting. He'd put a distance between himself and everything, everyone. But with Taylor, it was—he remembered, slowly, what it was like to be friends with somebody. They'd gotten drinks together, sometimes, and spent late nights on each other's couches, and Barnes wasn't blind. Kent's face, his mouth, the way his shoulders looked under the thin, crappy white t-shirts he wore whenever he didn't have to have a suit on.

He wouldn't have done it. They were partners; he was old and his hands shook and his chest was still a fucking mess, patchwork of webbed scars like a broken mirror. He wouldn't have done it.

But he'd thought about it. He trusted Kent, Kent had been his friend—true enough, but an evasion, because it was dancing around the part where he'd been half in love with Kent, helpless and warm and so fucking grateful for Kent's care and support, every brush of his hand or bump of his knee, every memory of his sleeping face slack against the arm of Barnes's sofa.

He'd thought about it. And it had been impossibly stupid, but the first thing he'd hated Kent for, the moment he'd looked at that screen and seen that split-second of video, was—was taking that away. Poisoning it, every time Barnes had ever touched Kent and been glad about it, every time he'd looked at Kent and let himself want it—all of it stained at once, unrecoverable, wrecked and hollowed out.

Then, of course, he'd started hating Kent for a whole bunch of other things. Because it all fit together, didn't it? Kent looking out for him, encouraging him, coaxing him a step at a time back toward active duty—because he was a weak link, because the more reliant he was on Kent the better. All Kent's _belief_ in him, and Barnes had had the sense to scoff at it, to keep a level head, but that didn't mean it hadn't fucking warmed him anyway, somewhere too deep and stupid to reason with. What an idiot he'd been.

And he'd hated himself, too. Because it didn't matter whether he caught Kent in the end, chased him down or locked him up or even killed him. He couldn't change that fact: he'd thought about it.)

 

 

 

"Jesus," Kent said again, shaking his head, and he pressed a hand to his eyes and stood up, walked back to the crate and sat down again facing the door. He leveled the gun at it and cleared his throat, and then said, "They helped me cut my tracker out on the way here. So if you've got a radio up your ass that you can call in with, this would be the time to use it, because I don't know how else we're going to get out of here alive."

Barnes stared at him, at his—at his shoulders. They'd gone plainclothes, and Kent had been put in white; not a t-shirt, a button-down. As if that helped at all.

He swallowed, and leaned his head back against the wall, and didn't say anything.

After a minute, Kent looked over at him. Kent had pulled himself together again, expression controlled—and a little wry, now, mouth slanting ruefully. "Well, maybe you'll get lucky, anyway," he murmured. "And if you do make it, Tom—" He stopped, rubbing a hand along the back of his neck, and shook his head. "At least tell me you're going to visit my grave now and then," he said at last, "even if it's just to spit on it."

 

 

 

Barnes didn't have a radio up his ass. But Kent's hadn't been the only tracking chip, between the two of them, and whoever had helped Kent cut his out, they hadn't bothered checking Barnes. He could still feel it, subcutaneous lump at the nape of his neck, whenever he pressed his head back against the wall.

Good luck, in a way, that he'd gone down like that and hit his head hard enough to bleed. The jab from getting the tracker injected had probably looked like nothing, a stray drip of blood or split skin from the blow.

But it might just as easily have damaged the chip. There was no way to tell.

Not until he started to hear the faint reverberating hum of chopper blades from overhead, anyway.

Kent heard it, too, his head snapping up, though he had the sense to keep the gun trained on the door. "The hell," he said softly, and then looked at Barnes.

And maybe it wasn't the feds. Maybe whoever was out there had made transportation arrangements without consulting Kent, planning to leave him behind and take off with whatever they could carry now that this little safehouse had been compromised.

But either way—"Eyes on the door," Barnes said. "Don't suppose you have another gun on you."

"Just the one," Kent said, with something that was almost a smile. "Sorry."

"Clip?"

"I've got enough bullets for all of them," Kent said. "If I don't miss."

But it sounded like maybe the FBI was going to solve part of that problem for him. The chopper was getting louder, and the raised voices from the other room didn't sound happy about it—and that was the distinct impact of boots on the roof, agents spreading out and securing a point of entry. The first gunfire sounded far away, farther away than it was; more shouting, a few sharp sounds, and then Barnes caught a distinct, "Fuck _this_ ," before the door flew open.

A woman, gun raised, glaring fiercely at Kent.

"I fucking knew it—we _never_ should have gone after you, you piece of shit—"

Kent smiled at her, thin. "Talk's cheap," he said, and shot her—she shot back, but an instant too late, aim already going wide as Kent's bullet dropped her. And the gun—the gun clattered out of her hand when she hit the floor, skidded sideways.

Barnes's hands were still ziptied; but if he had a gun, at least if somebody came up behind him and grabbed him by them, he might be able to shoot them in the foot. He kept low, crouching, scrambling along on his knees behind Kent while Kent kept covering the door, trading a half-dozen shots with another couple guys who'd been about to follow the woman in.

The gun hadn't gone far, still pretty close to the door, and somebody out there must've spotted Barnes as he lurched closer to it—suddenly one shot, two, three, were ricocheting off the concrete about six inches from Barnes's feet. That must have been what made Kent notice.

"Tom! The fuck are you doing?"

"Gun," Barnes said shortly, throwing himself one long stride so he could press himself against the wall—crappy cover, but it was all he had, and once he was leaning against it, it could hold him up until his fucking head quit spinning.

And then, of all the luck, he felt it: a nail. The end of a nail, poking out of the shitty plaster and right into his forearm.

He forced his arms up, ignoring the complaints from his stiff and aching shoulders, and caught the ziptie on it, trying to find the point of it. And his hands were cold, the sensation a little muted, but—that had to be the plastic snagging. If he just pressed—

"Tom!" Kent shouted again, and Barnes looked up and saw the guy: a mirror image of Barnes, pressed to the wall outside the door on the opposite side, only position in the whole place to get an angle on Barnes instead of Kent—who was using the door for cover, and so far had been spared anything worse than a bloody graze along the side of one arm.

Barnes needed to move. He knew that. But for an instant—

Barnes was Secret Service, presidential detail. And he'd lasted as long as he had precisely because he'd learned to override reflex: to stay in front of gunshots, not away from them.

Another half a second, and his brain would have been engaged again. Ashton wasn't here; there was nobody behind him. He didn't have anything he needed to catch a bullet for.

But the guy outside the door had no reason to give him half a second. He heard the shot and felt the impact in the same moment, and at least it had shoved him back and down hard enough that the ziptie gave against the nail. He caught himself against the wall, and then brought a hand up to—

To steady Kent. Kent, who was in front of him, who was—it didn't hurt, Barnes realized. He wasn't bleeding, at least not any more than he had been ten seconds ago.

The bullet hadn't hit him. It had hit Kent, because he'd thrown himself out from behind the door and into its path, and there was no way he'd done it by mistake.

He was sagging against Barnes, gasping, thready and breathless; Barnes held him up with one arm and grappled with the other for his hand, the gun in it, and brought it up and leveled it and shot the guy outside the door in the head. Another one of them tried to rush the doorway, now that Kent wasn't covering it, and Barnes shot him, too—and then there was a scattering of shots from somewhere further away, and someone right outside the doorway dropped with a cry and a thump.

The FBI. Barnes evaluated the likelihood that he and Kent's handgun were going to do any particular good with the FBI at thirty meters and closing, and tossed it away; the last thing he wanted was for somebody to mistake him for a terrorist and shoot him. At least if he was unarmed, they might pause for a second.

And then he lowered Kent down, settled him gingerly on his back, and Kent was bleeding fucking everywhere but at least he was still breathing. "Tom," he said. "That was stupid."

"Yeah," Barnes said. The wound was in Kent's shoulder, which wasn't great if it had caught a lung but was probably better for him than center-of-mass. He pressed his hands over it, ignoring the hot sticky surge of blood squeezing up between his fingers, and concentrated on pressure. That was what mattered.

"Not me," Kent said. "You. Jesus. Can't believe you made me do that."

"Shut up," Barnes advised, and Kent grinned up at him; no blood between his teeth. Maybe nothing had gotten him in the lung after all.

"Right back to that fucking military hospital," Kent murmured, almost contemplative. "And I was already sick of their ceiling."

"Deal with it," Barnes said, and kept his hands where they were—even when the FBI rushed in, even once he'd identified himself, once they were carrying Kent up to the roof; he kept his hands where they were and didn't take his eyes off Kent.

 

 

 

It was a while before he saw Kent again. He had to debrief, clean himself up, endure some shouting for haring off like that with Kent without dotting his "i"s or crossing his "t"s, and Kent was in surgery anyway. He bore it, said "yes, sir" and "no, sir" and kept his mouth shut, whichever would cause the least trouble in the moment.

But he managed to get permission for an official vehicle to take him to the military hospital, eventually. And when at last he did walk into Kent's room, Kent was even awake.

Kent looked up, and then stared. "Tom," he said.

"Mission was a success," Barnes said, looking away. "Overall."

"They yelled at you," Kent translated, unhesitating.

"Yeah," Barnes agreed.

He paused. There were guards—outside, and in here by the door, and he was already in enough trouble. He wasn't going to ask them to leave. But he could—he could step closer, at least. Step closer, up next to Kent's bed, and lower his voice, and look Kent in the eye.

"I can't forgive you," he said.

Kent didn't flinch. "You come here just to tell me that?" he said evenly.

"No," Barnes said. "What you did was—I can't understand it. I can't understand it and I never will, and I can't forgive you. But—" He stopped, and set a hand carefully against the edge of the bed. "But I know what it takes, to step in front of a bullet for someone. I know what it costs. I do understand that."

He looked at Kent, at his eyes, his mouth—and god, it was endlessly strange to think of, that bare little room and cement floor, that long frozen moment of surprise, Kent's lips against his. The way Kent had laughed after, harsh and unsteady; _it was supposed to be simple, it wasn't supposed to be like this_.

It was supposed to be simple for Barnes, too. But then betrayal never was, even if it was nothing but his own stupid heart doing it.

"No grave to visit," he said aloud, low. "So I guess I'll have to make do some other way. Be seeing you," and he could—he could at least lift his hand, let his fingertips fall to the back of Kent's wrist and rest there for a second, before he turned away.

"Yeah?" Kent said behind him, belated.

"Yeah," Barnes said, and glanced back so Kent would see he meant it before he walked out.

 

 


End file.
